Vedam

Vedam is about Money. It is about God. But importantly, it is about something beyond those both. It is about Life. Unarguably one of the greatest of Telugu films to come out in recent times, Vedam is a revolution. The film is a brave attempt of film making, atleast for the Telugu audience.

The basic plot is that there are five different tracks running parallely and most of the film take place in one day. The screenplay is non-linear with the characters' different fates interwoven. A little lapse here and there and film would have been a disaster but hats-off to Krish for that screenplay where nothing goes wrong. And the story moves seamlessly from one track to another, keeping the pace up, giving each one importance and at the same time letting us connect to the characters. That for me, is the film's greatest strength. With so much star power, a huge cast and a complex storyline, the film could've been either reckless, bland or worse, overcrowded. Krish doesn't commit one mistake throughout the film. The casting is spot on, the dialogues crisp and the background score, perfect. Keeravani's done an amazing job because in films like this, music plays a very important part.

And about the actors, there are about 10 important characters and all of them have performed amazingly. All their stories are extremely relatable and you've seen all of them somewhere or the other. My favourite track, personally, is that of Allu Arjun and Rajesh because both of them have come up with career best performances. But the story of the old man in the village is so powerful and portrayed so ruthlessly that in a few scenes I just had to look away from the screen. Manoj Bajpai was wasted in a small role but again Ravi Prakash fit in perfectly. Anushka was competent but the role of Karpuram was played with aplomb. The most poorly written track was that of Manoj and honestly, he didn't have anything to do throughout the film. The film is an out and out Krish's film and whatever was left out, Allu Arjun filled it in.

But Vedam isn't just a film. It's a tool. A tool to look at life in a new way. For instance, there's a talk about 40,000 rupees. What Krish has done is showcase the difference in views of the same money. For someone, that money is worth a new year party. For someone else, it's about freedom and education. There are a lot of things you could say about a film but the best films are those which have two traits, Honesty and Courage. Vedam is both bold, unbearably so at times and there's an inherent honesty in the cast and the crew which glorifies the film. A lot of talk has been going on as to how Leader and Prasthanam are bringing about the new wave in Telugu Cinema. With due respect to both of them, I loved watching those films, Vedam is a completely novel experience. Watch it. And you'll know what people mean when they say films affect them.

If there was one line to sum up the entire experience of watching Vedam, its an Allu Arjun line which says, "Deenammadi Jeevitham".